


Mental Caverns Without Sunshine

by mellonbread



Series: The Unfixable Thought Machine [2]
Category: Disco Elysium (Video Game)
Genre: Custom Skills, Gen, Internal Monologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:01:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26721820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mellonbread/pseuds/mellonbread
Summary: She was leaving Martinaise for the last time when she finally heard the City.
Series: The Unfixable Thought Machine [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1945072
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Mental Caverns Without Sunshine

YOU \- Well, that was an emotional meat grinder.  
  
You’re well away from the jetty, sailing across the bay. There’s a light fog. Things in Martinaise are about to get ugly. Now your job is to prevent a total disaster.  
  
You’re no stranger to long journeys with little to accompany you but your thoughts. This isn’t *traumatic*, dear, it’s a pleasant sailing excursion in cold weather. Nothing compared to a day in the Pale.  
  
And yet, here you are.  
  
  
MOMENTS OF SUFFICIENT LUCIDITY \- Time to slide your memories into all into their proper boxes, filed away where you don’t have to look at them again. Tag a handful of highlights, to take out and fondle again when you’re feeling maudlin.  
  
  
PERCEPTION \- The old fishing village. The apartment block, drenched with government-red fuel. The shouts of the children. The music from the hostel, barely audible, yet still replaying endlessly in your mind. The old man in his uniform. The police in their jackets.  
  
  
YOUNG AT HEART \- The smell of rum and lemonade. A rough beard on your sternum, between your breasts. A calloused hand, spiderwebbed with scars, reaching between your-  
  
  
HEART OF ICE \- Oh, *behave.*  
  
You had your time to ruminate on the Lieutenant Double Yefritor’s clumsy-but-enthusiastic rutting. Save the rest for the Partner’s lounge in Saint-Batiste.  
  
  
JUST A BURNING MEMORY \- The Lounge, the deck that looks out over the square on the East Side. Look, you can see the King, if you stand on your toes. He doesn’t know what’s about to happen, he doesn’t know…  
  
  
CORPORATE CULTURE \- Now’s the time to think about your report to the other directors. How you’ll spin this.  
  
  
THEORY OF MIND \- At the moment, the Union boss will be gloating to the Detective over the last conversation he overheard. Spinning the whole thing as a part of his plan. He anticipated all of this, you see.  
  
  
TRADECRAFT \- Yes, you knew your ship was bugged. How much more obvious could they be?  
  
“Top Union Men” indeed.  
  
  
OLD MONEY \- Now don’t be that way. They got one over on us, in the end. Eight percent of all the trade in Elysium, in the hands of the Débardeurs. And no one lifting a hand to stop it.  
  
  
YOU \- Whatever will you tell the board?  
  
  
CORPORATE CULTURE [Trivial: Success] \- Tell them they sent you to resolve the situation, and they will respect your decision. Then ignore anyone who complains, and buy out anyone who moves against you. Same as you always do.  
  
  
JUST A BURNING MEMORY \- Like in Hsin Yao. You held a rifle in your hands and told them… Told them there wasn’t anywhere left to run. There were flowers in the air. Not the little forget me nots, but the ones that grew on the trees when-  
  
  
MOMENTS OF SUFFICIENT LUCIDITY \- Not now, we’re working.  
  
  
CORPORATE CULTURE \- Yes. If you drowned here, there would be no record of your decision. The other partners would assume foul play, and put out a contract on the harbor.  
  
  
THE SHARP END \- A handful of turnover specialists, wave after wave of general contractors. INSURCOM might even condescend to slide down from their aerostatics and get their hands bloody. Then another decade of urban war. Maybe the last one, for Revachol.  
  
  
SEA LEGS \- So watch where you’re pointing this thing, dear.  
  
  
??? \- Then it comes back to you, unbidden. The feel of the streets. The impression of a headless statue, silhouetted red and gold by the setting sun.  
  
  
MOMENTS OF SUFFICIENT LUCIDITY \- Stop. Right now. Last warning.  
  
  
JUST A BURNING MEMORY \- I didn’t-  
  
  
??? \- The rumble of a thousand motor carriages. Feet stomping rhythmically down boogie street to the sound of Iilmaraan funk. The smell of black powder from a brace of pistols and a failed mass shooting. A bootprint shaped like a city.  
  
  
MOMENTS OF SUFFICIENT LUCIDITY \- That’s it. Back in the box you go!  
  
  
JUST A BURNING MEMORY \- It wasn’t me! It’s someone else!  
  
  
MOMENTS OF SUFFICIENT LUCIDITY \- IT’S ALWAYS SOMEONE ELSE!  
  
  
ENTROPONETICS \- No, she’s right, it’s not a memory. It’s not a memory, it’s something else… Oh God, it’s something else, it’s-  
  
  
??? \- Streets like blood vessels, the Esperance winding through the city like intestines. The old pre-millennial buildings like phosphorescent bones in the night. Filled with cells that are people, and each of them filled with thoughts of their own. All bursting inside your skull like a thousand champagne flutes shattering.  
  
  
SEA LEGS \- Focus! If you hit sea ice you’re dead.  
  
  
FORCE MAJEURE [Challenging: Success] \- You yank the tiller in time to keep the prow pointed away from the worst of the danger.  
  
  
MOMENTS OF SUFFICIENT LUCIDITY \- Lock it down. Automatic reaction.  
  
  
YOU \- Your brain is an unthinking machine, an assembly of sturdy polished clockworks whose only purpose is the steering of the vessel. The waves of nostalgia will seep off the chrome flywheels, the memories crushed between the finely intermeshed teeth of the gears. The part of you that realizes it exists hides.  
  
But it isn’t enough.  
  
Something enormous rises in your mind’s eye, crushing your feeble attempts to control it.  
  
  
ENTROPONETICS \- This is it. The blend-over of the self. The Big fuzz. A sea of dreams to drown in. You know it had to end like this, someday.  
  
  
MOMENTS OF SUFFICIENT LUCIDITY \- I couldn’t stop it.  
  
I’m sorry.  
  
  
??? \- It gives off a hum.  
  
The hum rises.  
  
  
YOU \- God, please...  
  
  
SHIVERS [Impossible: Success] \- “THANK YOU”  
  
  
YOU \- ...  
  
What?  
  
  
SHIVERS \- The city falls on top of you in an embrace.  
  
It wanted to do this for so long, but it couldn’t. And now it can.  
  
Its homes and shops and towers and ports will not be leveled by the Coalition Ship Archer. Its many poor will not be slaughtered by the men of Mundi and Graad. Its children will go on living long enough to see the end.  
  
  
JUST A BURNING MEMORY \- ...It loves you back.  
  
  
YOU \- What?  
  
  
ENTROPONETICS \- There were always people who could hear the city. You’ve been some of them, you know this.  
  
  
MOMENTS OF SUFFICIENT LUCIDITY \- It’s a sign you’re finally cracking.  
  
  
JUST A BURNING MEMORY \- You’ve loved it your whole life, but you never decided to stop hurting it. Even when you knew you should.  
  
Until now.  
  
  
THE BAY \- The distant fog bleeds off, slowly.  
  
You clutch the tiller, tighter than necessary.  
  
  
HEART OF ICE [Difficult: Failed] \- It hurts.  
  
  
YOUNG AT HEART \- It feels good.  
  
  
PERCEPTION \- The wind dies. A chunk of sea ice calves and breaks apart, glittering in the sun.  
  
A monumental ZAMM ship celebrates the cold, clear day with its horn. An RCM harbor patrol boat putters toward it, no doubt ready to issue a thousand real citation for obstructing a navigable waterway.  
  
  
THE SHARP END \- (Almost) everybody gets to live, this time.   
  
  
OLD MONEY \- You’ll pay for it, personally.  
  
  
JUST A BURNING MEMORY \- But all this will go on.  
  
  
YOU \- You tack into the wind and head for home.

**Author's Note:**

> Most people I talk to didn't find Joyce's final dialogue, when she leaves the fishing village and Martinaise. This won't make any sense unless you did.


End file.
